Riding the Rails on a Quicker, Cleaner Locomotive

When you think clean transportation tech, freight trains probably don’t come to mind. But General Electric has developed a diesel-electric locomotive it claims is quicker, cleaner and more reliable than anything hauling freight.

AC locomotives are more reliable because they have fewer parts. They’ve also got a lot more pulling power. GE says 600 AC locomotives can do the work of 800 DC models – saving 70 million gallons of fuel annually and cutting CO2 emissions by 1 million tons.

“AC locomotives are better suited to handle heavier trains due to higher tractive effort at slower speeds,” Joe Faust of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad told Wired.com. The railroad was impressed enough by the technology to add 25 of the new locomotives to its fleet.

Not everyone is convinced.

DC locomotives cost a lot less money, and despite the maintenance issues have a longer lifespan. “AC doesn’t bring anything to the table” Jeff Laymon, a test engineer at Amtrak, said in an essay examining the two technologies.

The real revolution in locomotive technology is still to come. GE and other companies are working on a hybrid-diesel locomotives that will use regenerative braking. That could cut fuel consumption by as much as 15 percent and emissions by as much as 50 percent compared to most of the freight locomotives running today. GE claims that if all North American locomotives built before 2001 were replaced with hybrid models, in one year it would in one year cut nitrogen oxide emissions as much as removing one third of all cars from U.S. roads.